


Mamihlapinatapai

by Kamari333



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Dancetale (Undertale), Alternate Universe - Underfell (Undertale), Comfort, Dancetale, Drinking Games, Drinking to Cope, Drunken Flirting, Drunkenness, Idiots in Love, M/M, Sans (Undertale) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Sans (Undertale) Remembers Resets, Scents & Smells, Thats My Emotional Support Coat, Woud probably be tagged Enemies to Lovers if it wasnt a oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-10-06 07:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20503460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kamari333/pseuds/Kamari333
Summary: Archiving fromPillowfort.A request from Fonty, who wanted to see how my interpretation of Underfell Sans (Red) and Dancetale Sans (Dance), as seen in myEbott is a Multiverse series, would get together in an AU where my interpretation of Underlust Sans (Lust) did not exist.





	Mamihlapinatapai

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fonty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fonty/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Burlesque (Censored)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11542425) by [Kamari333](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kamari333/pseuds/Kamari333). 
  * Inspired by [Burlesque (Uncensored)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15372225) by [Kamari333](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kamari333/pseuds/Kamari333). 

It was 12:09. Dance stared at the dim, inoffensive numbers on his phone, tinted a pale green hue to mimic those iconic digital clocks that he had only ever seen in movies until he built one himself. His soul pulsed frantic and inconsolable in his ribs, a staccato that beat double-time and left no room to relax. His clothes were damp with fear sweat, every bone in his body sticky and quivering. His hands shook. He only noticed because it was harder to read text that kept swaying rapidly from side to side.

Sighing, Dance let his hand fall, along with the rest of him until his head hit his equally damp pillows. He should just take a shower, should just go back to sleep.

His chest ached, a bright ribbon of burning agony shaped ironically like the wicked grin of it's giver. The fleeting thought sent him tumbling back into an anxiety attack, the whole world suddenly too fast and too loud and too much, even in the silence and darkness of his messy bedroom.

Yup. Shower. Dance rolled out of bed, his legs giving out immediately so that he ended up face planting into a pile of dirty clothes. Dance lay there, feeling nauseous and frustratingly weak (he hated it, _hated it, hated feeling weak and powerless and vulnerable and afraid, he hated it so god damn much he could puke-_)

Dance scrambled, scratching at the door-frame as he threw himself into the hall and bolted to the bathroom, falling to his knees and doubling over to hack uselessly into the toilet he and his brother never used. Nothing came up, obviously (he was a fucking skeleton monster, _he didn't have a stomach, why the ever loving fuck his soul thought he needed to throw up when he hadn't even known there was a word for the sensation until he'd come to the surface was a mystery he would never solve_), but the tense, violent wringing sensation as if his spine was being twisted and pulled and squeezed continued for a good two minutes.

Oh. Yeah. His spine was still messed up from the accident with the jack a few months back. Even after bowing under his brother's insistence to go seek help, he had been unable to find any monster chiropractic specialists (_and he sure as fuck wasn't letting a human touch him_). Alphys had done her best, straightened him out, but it throbbed and ached every so often if he moved too fast.

It was probably a good thing he'd reached the toilet, since the pain (both phantom and real) had caused him to salivate and he'd hacked up a pale, desaturated glob of ectoplasmic slime. Dance slumped, head pillowed in his arms as he shook, a pathetic whimper escaping from his clenched teeth.

He hoped that his brother hadn't heard.

After a few moment getting his bearings, Dance stripped and got into the shower, standing under the hottest water their apartment could funnel to him. He didn't bother with soap (the slime from his sweat washed right off, and if he tried scrubbing he'd only end up cutting himself on the sharper ridges of his scar like an idiot, the way he was still shaking), instead leaning on the side of the shower and remembering how to breath.

There was definitely no way he was getting back to sleep.

Not sober anyway.

"heh... sorry pap. this is why i don't like making promises..."

* * *

Showered, freshly dressed, and filled with a new level of self loathing, Dance pushed his way into the dance club. It was well after midnight now, probably closer to 1AM, so, obviously, the place was packed. Napstablook was DJing again, hovering shyly behind the record table as he worked the sound system like the pro he had made himself. Dance sent him a friendly wave as he wove his way through the throng of people (ignoring the best he could just how many of them were human).

Dance was right up against the bar before he noticed him; there, sitting in the seat right next to Dance's favorite spot, holding a bottle of scotch in one hand up in the air, at an angle, but the neck of the bottle, and wiggling his other hand at gut height as he bobbed his head. It was that guy, the one who kept picking up that nice car (the one that would have been nicer _if it hadn't fallen on him, but no, Dance wasn't bitter, of course not_). It was that asshole who thought he could intimidate Dance just because he was bigger and stronger and could crush him like a grape in a car compressor.

Dance wasn't having any of his shit tonight. Fuck that.

Also that air guitar work was awful. Moron. His fingering was all wrong for this key.

"what are you doing here?" Dance demanded, pointedly pulling himself into his seat, the seat he always sat in, and no overgrown dumbass was going to scare him away from it.

Red froze for a split second, sockets which had been closed in concentration now opening in that slow, calm manner that Dance himself had used so often to express disinterest. "izza a free c'ntry."

"ya know this is a nice place right?" Dance asked as pleasantly as he could manage, waving to Grillby. "its not the kind to have bar fights."

"then why ya pickin' one?"

Dance tensed at the words, flinching from the sharpness of that wit. "i'm not picking anything. except my drink for the night."

Grillby came over, flames flickering in concern.

Dance tried to disarm his friend with a smile, but he knew Grillby wouldn't be so easily calmed. Dance hadn't come out this late in ages, and when he did, it was never good. "madeira. the good stuff," Dance ordered.

Grillby gave him a long, hard look, eyes shimmering with both judgment and acceptance that burned through him like Dance was only fossil fuel. Dance did not flinch; he had reached his limit and now there was no helping it. Grillby seemed to deflate, then turned to fetch the drink.

When Dance next looked at Red, the asshole had an unreadable expression. "what?"

"wine snob," was the eloquent reply.

"not all of us had our taste buds burned off with a car battery," Dance retorted.

"yer just mad yer a lightweight," Red growled, voice low and rough yet still managing to pop the 't' sounds like the twang of a dart striking the bullseye.

"i'm not a lightweight." Dance was anything but a lightweight. He could drink _anyone_ under the table and that included oversized beer kegs with brass knuckles.

Red looked down on Dance, sockets half lidded in a cocky smirk that Dance wanted to scrub off with sandpaper. "yer a fukin' lightweight. take yer sissy drink n go home n watch yer cartoons. thiz'z th big boys time."

Grillby set the wine bottle in front of Dance, gloved fingers pulling away from the neck of the bottle with visible hesitance. His eyes jumped between Dance and Red, the flames flickering on top of his head shifting color in nervous little bursts. Dance couldn't blame him; Red was rather terrifying.

Dance also knew that giving guys like Red an inch meant they would walk all over you. "like you have any room to talk when your ass takes up so much space. i could drink you so far under the table you'd need a shovel to dig yourself out."

"wanna bet on it?" Red asked, casual and unobtrusive, the hallmark of a man who knew damn fucking well what he was doing.

"loser covers the bill," Dance shot back without missing a beat. He smacked the bartop twice, nodding to Grillby. "we'll start with the wine and work our way up."

"sure thin', princess." How Red managed to make even agreement sound sleazy and disquieting, like audible oil, Dance would never know.

Dance took the glasses, ignoring his friend's disapproval as he poured out the first shot of the evening. He was surging with confidence. _There was no way in hell he could lose!_ Shooting the aggressive idiot a grin that Dance hoped conveyed all of his derision, he threw his head back and downed the drink.

The fact that Red did the same only needled Dance into drinking the next one faster.

And the next.

And the next.

And the next.

Before Dance really knew what had happened, they were both two bottles of wine in, had breezed through as much tequila, and were now working on scotch.

Red was just finishing his latest shot when the music shifted. It slowed, some sort of ballad starting, the strum of a string instrument heralding the slower melody. The lights dimmed, and Dance could see the people on the dance floor pairing off to slow-dance, catching their collective breath.

Dance grit his teeth at the change, shivering at the change in ambiance.

As Red poured his next drink, Dance heard rough, gravelly vocalizations in a language he didn't understand, matching near-perfectly to the vocals of the song. Red was singing.

Red was singing, and it was good, in a weird, evocative way.

"wha' ya think yur doin'?" Dance demanded.

"drinkin', 'memb'r?" Red did not look away from his pouring, and only paused his singing for the time it took to respond, picking back up again seamlessly.

"nah, with yer stupid face." Dance took his own shot.

"drinkin'." And Red matched it without flinching.

"nah, fuck'r," Dance growled, after taking another shot (so he wasn't left behind). "yer shingin'! who said yu could shing??"

"me?" Red squinted. "why. dun like it?"

_He liked it a lot. Wait. No, he hated it. No, he liked it a whole lot. No, he-_ "oh fuck, 'm so drunk." Dance let his head fall to the bartop, head spinning. A little humming shouldn't be affecting him like it was. He was, definitely, definitely drunk.

He could still win, though. Dance looked back up at Red.

Red was much closer than Dance remembered him being. He could see the subtle changes in the hue of his eyelight, shimmers and flickers of gold woven in the muted crimson. He could see the hairline fractures healed over from what must have been the injury that knocked out his tooth, bisecting Red's eyesocket and spiderwebbing from the crown of the golden canine sparkling in the changing light. Dance felt the entirety of what he was go silent and still, overwhelmed by something profound and yet mundane; held captive by a sudden, illogical impulse so ineffable that his compromised wit could not put it to words.

Yup. He'd had enough to drink. "'m out. put it on m' tab, grilbz," Dance muttered, tearing his eyes away.

Dance slid off the stool. He shifted to put his weight on first one foot, then the other, only to feel first a weakness, then a brutish pain in his middle. The floor tipped out from under him precipitously. For a long, harrowing moment moderated by the causative intoxication, Dance was certain he was going to faceplant. Then he felt the jarring rush of electric cold, a winter wind ripping through his bones without touching him. What was left of Dance's soul shot up into his nonexistent throat, an involuntary shout wrenched out of him and _he tried to teleport, he tried, but his reflexes weren't what they used to be, weren't at his best while he was so god damn drunk, and before he knew it-_

There was a strong, sturdy arm around Dance's ribcage, strength enough surging through it with icy imminence that he would fall to pieces should it even flex the wrong way. Dance was choking on his panic. He gripped at the arm, preying that nobody could tell just how hard he was rattling.

_He was going to die, he was going to die again, he was going to die-_

"careful, dumbass, could o' hurt yerself like that," Red growled, carefully lowering Dance to the ground until he could get his footing again.

Dance widened his stance, instinctively seeking out the best stability and maneuverability. His breathing came hard and heavy, making his aching chest heave. The room spun, but he couldn't, couldn't afford to fall now, not when-

"chill, grease monkey," Red's voice pierced through the jumbled mess of Dance's thoughts. "fuck, yer shakin- he's shakin', hold on i'll call a cab. fuck, i knew i shouldn't o' sharked 'm- dun gimme that look, sparkplug, i know, fuck-"

Dance felt a warm weight settle on his shoulders, a gentle pressure guiding him forward. _The door. Yes. He needed to go home. It was late. He needed to sneak back into the house before his brother woke up._ Dance focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

The room was swimming.

The room was _swimming_, everything was so _loud_. Dance was sure he should have run into the crowd by now. Right? There were still people on the dance floor, right? The music was loud. Soft yet loud. The melody was actually pretty catchy. Dance hummed along with it. His stride naturally smoothed out to fall in time with the beat. Dance noticed this because he felt the strain on his legs drop away. He tried to pull out of it and only managed to trip and nearly fall again. The only thing that saved him was a grip on his shoulders, unyielding and indomitable.

Then it was colder, fresh night (or was it early morning) air buffeting his face. It was too cold. Dance hid in the warm thing on him more. The world was still spinning. Someone asked him a question. His address? He knew where he lived...

He knew where he lived...

He knew that...

The next thing Dance knew, he was blinking up at his own bedroom ceiling. He couldn't remember how he got there, but since he arrived alive and well enough to remove his shoes, he didn't really care. He rolled a little to one side, checking his pockets for his phone. He found it.

4:06 PM.

Dance couldn't remember when he'd last slept so long. Or so well. He closed his eyes, tucking his phone away again and going to burrow back into the soft, warm thing he was covered in. It smelled of smoke, leather, sweat, mustard, and something fruity...

Five more minutes wouldn't hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> This looks like the beginning of an interesting relationship and I can only speculate what would happen next ~<3


End file.
